Mugabe rules out negotiation with white farmers over land

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has ruled out negotiating with the country's white farmers, telling them their rights to own property were secondary to blacks, state radio reported yesterday.

His comments came as a Harare court ruled that eviction orders issued by the government to 54 white farmers were illegal and the farmers could return to their properties.

But Mugabe offered no hope to the country's dwindling number of white farmers when he spoke yesterday in the south eastern town of Chiredzi.

"There is no room for talks, there is no room for negotiations because the real owners of this land are asserting their rights and reclaiming their land," he told a crowd that included a sprinkling of whites.

"If you want to live with us, to farm alongside us, we, the rightful owners of our ancestral land, will carve out some land for you.");document.write("

advertisement

");
}
}
// -->

"But you cannot decide what you will have in our country," he said, speaking in both English and the Shona vernacular.

Mugabe spoke a few days before the deadline of his so-called "revolutionary land reform program" and the distribution of thousands of white-owned farms among landless Zimbabweans.

The Commercial Farmers' Union, which represents the estimated 3,000 white farmers who have stayed in Zimbabwe, has been pleading for discussions with the government to establish farmers' rights during the regime's seizure of white-owned land.

Mugabe rebuffed an appeal for direct talks with the group two weeks ago.

Fifty-four white farmers won a legal victory in Harare today when a judge quashed eviction orders issued by the government.

Jenni Williams, spokeswoman for Justice for Agriculture, a lobby group for farmers fighting the regime in court, said justice was served by Judge Benjamin Paradza's decision.

"These properties have been removed from the acquisition list, and should return to full production, making food and earning foreign currency for Zimbabwe," she said.

About 200 white farmers have been arrested by police since August 9 when the deadline expired on eviction orders for 2,900 farmers to abandon their farms.

Many other farmers have been forced from their property by senior ruling party officials claiming prime farming operations worth millions of dollars for themselves.

The defendants' lawyer Jeremy Callow said the eviction orders were cancelled in most cases because the government had failed to carry out the legal procedures for eviction.

Other cases were thrown out because descriptions of the farms on the eviction orders "were so inadequate that the properties described do not in fact exist," he said.

Callow said if the government was determined to force the farmers from their land, they would have to restart the 90-day eviction process.

"They have no choice if they wish to lawfully acquire the farms at issue. They must follow their own legislation as passed by our parliament," he said.

Mugabe claims the government has resettled 300,000 peasant farmers on seized white land, and that by the end of this month, another 54,000 "indigenous (black) emergent commercial farmers" will have been resettled as well, officially marking the end of the land reform program.

Aid agencies and farm union officials have said that amid the worst famine in the country, chaos reigns on most commercial farms that were once hugely productive.